Hanssens Oude Gueuze

Brewed by Hanssens Artisanaal
Style: Lambic - Gueuze
Dworp, Belgium

Bottle from Beers of Europe. Hazy orange with no lasting head. Sparkling. Cheesy feet barnyard aroma with apple and lemon. Beautifully acidic and sour with just slightly less in-your-face sourness than Cantillon. My first 5 and worth it. Gorgeous beer.

Fantastic gueuze. Very strong flavour, tart, cheesy and sour, some clove. Not as compromising as the Girardin, but the strong gueuze flavour is exactly right without crossing the border of extreme sourness, like e.g. Cantillon. Actually, this beer has only one flaw: my mother liked it as well, when i was at home she drank half the bottle! Close to perfection.

The champagne of beers. Very acidic and fresh. Haven’t tasted it since a trip to Belgium in 1996, but still remembers it as a one the best.

Aroma is complex with lemon, grass and sourness being amazin. Taste is soo refreshing, seriously drinkable and generally outstanding. The best beer from my 21st birthday by far.

Head is initially average sized, fizzy, white, mostly diminishing. Body is hazy light amber, bottle conditioned. Aroma is heavily yeasty (horseblanket, barnyard, leather, cobwebs, cheese), lightly hoppy (grass, lemon), with notes of white grapes, cask wood, sour apple, olives, and all that is wild and funky. Flavor is moderately sweet, heavily acidic. Finish is lightly sweet, heavily acidic, lightly bitter. Medium body, velvety texture, lively to fizzy carbonation, lightly astringent. Possibly the wildest gueuze still made today...loads and loads of horse/stable/cobwebs/etc. aroma, just overflowing with rough-and-tumble rustic yeasty charm. Doesn’t have the elegance and finesse of Girardin Black, but good grief what it makes up for in sheer balls-to-the-wall arrogance! And ends up being virtually equivalent in rating for its over-the-top uniqueness. This has always been the most distinctive and unusual gueuze for me, and this re-rate proves no different. Monumental if you can handle a walk on the *really* WILD side. Draw-dropping balance in the mouth that makes it nearly impossible to stop drinking. I really need to pump up my cellar with this stuff, as it never disappoints.

Bottled. Hazy pale amber, small head. Striking barnyard aroma. Citric with rounded maltiness and a superb light, sparkling mouthfeel. Acidic with concetrated berries dominating a complex flavour profile. An unbelievably fantastic beer, at least in the shape this bottle was in.

Really really really good, but then, its a style I adore. Orange/peach color with a good, thin head. Notes of vinyl, citrus, grapefruit, vinegar, and other fruity possibilities. Notes of sweetness in the finish. Moderate palate. Not quite enough jaw-breaking sourness for my taste, but close enough.

Horse-blanket, leather, musty, cheese-like aromas with an almost sweet undertone. Murky and opaque orange-tan coloured body with small white head that diminishes to ring. Fruit, malt, and floral tones play off each other nicely in the aroma with an omnipresent tartness. Dry in the mouth and puckering on the edges of the tongue. Bottle enjoyed with beerbuzzmontreal, MartinT, Rastacouere and a gang of bierophoux. Fresh batch received from Bièropholie in late summer 2006 approaches perfection especially at or near room temperature. Original score 9-3-8-4-17=4.1.